Archive for May 2011

Starting tonight the Yankees embark on a nine game road trip. They are heading to Seattle for the weekend series, then down to Oakland, and finally will cap off the road trip with a series at Anaheim.

While west coast trips are never fun, this doesn’t seem so bad. I mean, both Seattle and Oakland have terrible offenses, and Anaheim isn’t anything special. Well, take a look at the pitching match-ups.

Seattle: Felix Herandez, Michael Pineda, Justin Vargas

Oakland: Trevor Cahill, Brett Anderson, Gio Gonzalez

Los Angeles: Jered Weaver, Dan Haren, Ervin Santana

Yup. That’s arguably the best three trio’s in the AL. Not only do we get to face them, but we face them on the road AND it’s a west coast trip. For real- we couldn’t have missed Weaver, or Felix out of the nine games? This has to be the worst scheduling luck I’ve seen. That’s seven possible Cy Young candidates right there. And we NEVER win in LA anyway. LA could throw their backup catcher against us and win*.

In the past I used the ratio, but last year I remember reading why the K-BB difference is a better indicator or measure of pitcher performance. Today, that notion was reinforced by Tangotiger on his blog. The comments are good as well.

I particularly like this comment:

Quote:

There doesn’t seem much room for dispute here. Let’s take pitchers with over 400 IP in last decade (2000-2010). The top 50 pitchers in K/BB have an average R9 of 3.84, while top 50 in K-BB/PA are 3.53. The correlation with R/9 for K:BB is -.62, while correlation for K-BB is -.75. And weighting walks as twice the value of Ks in the differential (K-2*BB/PA) reduces rather than increases the correlation (-.68).

As you probably know by know, after being placed ninth in the lineup last night, Jorge Posada asked out of the game. Not because he was mad at hitting ninth, but because he’s been struggling. Oh, and he claims his back his hurting him. Yet he didn’t go to team doctors or tell anyone. What a mess.

Do I believe his back is a problem? A little bit. I’m sure at his age it aches a little bit. But do I believe it’s why he took himself out of the lineup? No. He said he saw his own chairopractor. Bullshit. If his back was hurting, he would have told Joe Girardi. He would have gone to the medical staff. I mean, he said he used his back as an excuse. So why make it a mystery and not tell anyone until he told the media after the game. If you’re not going to get it treated, it at least makes sense to tell the manager. That way people will say “oh, he had a back problem” and not say “oh, he quit on the team”.

I think the real reason he dropped himself is because he is a baby- mind the kindergarten level language. That simple. He’s been struggling this season and the move down to ninth was too much for him. He’s a proud man and is taking his struggles to heart. He knows he deserved the drop in the lineup and couldn’t handle it mentally.

But despite struggling, he is easily overhyping his slow start. A .165/.272/.349/.276/69+ line is bad. But it’s not even the worst in the league among good hitters. Carl Crawford has been almost twice as bad. If anything Crawford should be the one pouting since he has been worse, is a lot younger, and making BANK. Yet it’s Jorge who is the one acting like a spoiled Little League kid. That’s not even mentioning the fact Jorge has been hitting better in May, raising his OBP and BA. Plus he does he six home runs, which do count for something. Many players have had worse starts and/or slumps. They never publicly quit on themselves and the team in this manner. And the fact the Yankees are sliding and Boston is in town makes this a lot worse. Jorge is supposed to be a leader and an example in the clubhouse- but I guess not.

This all incident has been extremely embarrassing, especially as a fan, and Jorge’s reputation took a major hit in my book.